NASA released close-up photos Wednesday. interstellar comet This is a quick and one-time tour of the solar system.
Discovered in summerthe comet known as 3I/Atlas is only the third confirmed object to visit our corner of space from another star. Last month it flew harmlessly past Mars.
Three NASA spacecraft on and near the Red Planet photographed the comet as it passed just 18 miles (29 million km) away, revealing a fuzzy white blur. European Space The agency's two satellites around Mars also made observations.
Other NASA spacecraft will remain on view in the coming weeks, including James Webb Space Telescope. At the same time, astronomers are pointing their ground-based telescopes at the approaching comet, which is about 190 meters (307 million kilometers) from Earth. Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project arrived from Italy on Wednesday.
The comet can be seen from Earth in the predawn sky through binoculars or a telescope.
“Everyone who operates the telescope wants to look at it because it is an exciting and rare opportunity,” said NASA Acting Director of Astrophysics Sean Domagal-Goldman.
The closest the comet will come to Earth will be 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) in mid-December. It will then fly back into interstellar space and never return.
ESA's Jupiter-bound Juice spacecraft has been training its cameras and science instruments on the comet all month, especially as it approaches the Sun. But scientists won't get any of these observations until February because Juice's main antenna serves as a heat shield while it's near the Sun, limiting the flow of data.
Named after the Chilean telescope that first discovered it, the comet is believed to have a diameter of between 1,444 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 km). The observations suggest that the exceptionally fast-moving comet may have originated in a star system older than our own, “which gives me chills to think about,” said Tom Statler, a NASA scientist.
“This means that 3I/Atlas is not just a window into another solar system, it is a window into the deep past, so deep that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our Sun,” Statler told reporters.
NASA officials were quick to dispel rumors that this friendly visitor to the solar system, as they called it, could be some kind of alien ship. They said the federal government shutdown meant they were unable to respond to all the theories that have arisen in recent weeks.
The space agency is constantly looking for life beyond Earth, “but 3I/Atlas is a comet,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya.
